Dsl

Process DSL — context expressions

This document describes the small DSL used to reference parts of a process execution context and to apply "modifiers" (functions, source reducers, fallbacks) to those references. The implementation lives in src/dslContext.ts and the tests are at src/__tests__/dslContext.test.ts.

Overview

A DSL expression is always enclosed in ${...} when embedded. The parser and serializer in this package support converting between the typed SelectedContext objects and their compact DSL string.

Top-level expression types

• Attribute: @<key> — references an attribute on the current object.

  • Example: @name

• Nested attribute: @<refKey>.<attrKey> — follows a reference attribute to another object and takes its attribute.

  • Example: @owner.id

• Relation: $relation(<associationRef>,<direction>,<key>,<name>)

  • Example: $relation(my.assoc, A, id, title)

• Execution context: $context(<id>,<key>)

  • Example: $context(12345, result)

• User request: $userRequest(<id>,<key>,<_class>)

  • Example: $userRequest(123, value, MyClass)

• Const: #<value>,<key> — a literal value and a target key.

  • Numbers, booleans, null/undefined, quoted strings and arrays are supported.
  • Example: #42,answer or #"hello",greeting or #[1,2,3],arr

• Function as primary expression: =><funcRef>(<props...>)

  • Example: =>myFunc(a=1,b="x")

Modifiers

Modifiers always start with => and are appended after the main expression separated by spaces (at top-level). Examples:

• Source reducer: =>SOURCE(<funcRef>,<props...>)
• Fallback: =>FALLBACK(<props...>) or =>FALLBACK(<value>)
• Arbitrary function modifiers: =><funcRef>(<props...>)

Important parsing details

• Splitting into expression + modifiers is done at top-level only — the parser ignores => inside nested brackets, quotes and template expressions ${...}.
• The tokenizer respects nested parentheses (), arrays [], object braces {}, quoted strings (single/double) with escapes, and ${...} template blocks.
• simplifyFuncRef is used when serializing to shorten function references; expandFuncRef restores those during parsing.

Examples

• ${@name} — attribute name
• ${@owner.id =>MYFUNC(a=1) =>FALLBACK(10)} — nested attribute with a function modifier and a fallback
• ${#"he\"llo",greet} — const string with escaped quote
• ${=>COMPUTE(sum=1)} — function as primary expression